Notwithstanding the prevalence of personal computers, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other computing and/or communications devices, people may sometimes still prefer to write or sketch by hand. For example, a person may wish to write or sketch on paper, on a whiteboard, or on other types of non-electronic media. While writing or sketching by hand, a person may want to reference an electronic resource, such as a website or other electronic information, such as a map, a photograph, a song, a video, a list of contacts or the like, that is available online or is otherwise stored in an electronic form. In many instances, the electronic resource may be identified by an address, such as a uniform resource locator (URL). In order to make reference to the electronic resource in a manner that facilitates subsequent access to the electronic resource, the user may include the address, such as the URL, in their written work. Thereafter, the person reviewing the user's handwritten work may access the electronic resource by entering the address, such as the URL, into a computing or communications device.
However, the addresses, such as the URLs, of electronic resources are generally quite lengthy. Thus, the writing of the address in the handwritten work and the subsequent entry of the address into a computing or communications device may take some time and effort and may be prone to errors. In this regard, errors relating to the address of an electronic resource may include mistakes in writing the address or in subsequently typing or otherwise re-entering the address, such as mistakes attributable to being unable to clearly read the handwritten address while endeavoring to enter the address into a computing or communications device.
In an effort to electronically capture handwritten information, digital pens may be utilized in order to allow specific areas of a page to be associated with electronic information. However, digital pen technology generally requires the use of a particular pen which may include a camera and specific types of paper, such as paper which includes a grid of micro-dots to allow the pen to be accurately located relative to the page, such as based upon an image of the page that is captured by the camera of the pen.
Techniques have also been developed to shorten a URL, such as by compressing a lengthy URL into a shorter URL in an effort to simply the manner in which a URL is referenced. In accordance with these techniques, a database may store both the original, longer URL and the compressed or shorter URL so as to link the two related URLs. As such, a user may generate a shorter URL that is representative of a longer URL and may then include the shorter URL in the handwritten work. Although a shorter URL may be simpler to write, a user must have access to a computing or communications device to obtain the shorter representation of the URL and must then tediously and accurately copy the shorter URL from the display of the computing or communications device into their handwritten work. Additionally, shorter URLs may sometimes be ambiguous to read and write depending upon the font in which the shorter URLs are displayed.
A user may alternatively reference an electronic resource by a barcode or quick response (QR) code that serves to encode information, such as URLs. However, a barcode or QR code is generally difficult or at least time consuming to draw and is therefore unlikely to be readily adopted by users for inclusion in handwritten writings or sketches. In order to avoid the challenges associated with drawing a barcode or QR code, the barcode or QR code could be printed on stickers that may then be placed on a piece of paper upon which the user is writing. However, the use of such stickers requires access to a computing device and an associated printer for generating the stickers. Additionally, in some instances, the user may not wish to place a sticker upon the medium, such as a whiteboard, upon which the user is writing since the medium may be reused on multiple occasions.